


two houses

by voidknight



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Bugs & Insects, Character Study, Conversations, Gen, Identity Issues, Implied/Referenced Self-Harm, Mathematics, Michael is a Little Shit, Surreal, The Spiral, Trypophobia, none of it is very graphic but there's a definite vibe, probably not about tma michael but it fits lmao, rating is for canon typical jane imagery, set just after mag32 hive
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-13
Updated: 2020-07-13
Packaged: 2021-03-04 19:01:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,901
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25251298
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voidknight/pseuds/voidknight
Summary: There is a wasps' nest in Jane Prentiss' attic. And today, there is also an impossible, bright yellow door.
Comments: 9
Kudos: 32





	two houses

**Author's Note:**

> _It is not the patterns that enthrall me,_ reads Jane’s statement. _I’m not one of those fools chasing fractals. No, it’s what sings behind them. Sings that I am beautiful. Sings that I am a home._

Jane Prentiss’ attic is a small, cramped thing with floorboards the color of rust and wooden beams that sag under the weight of a thin, shingled roof. Pale light sinks to the floor from the single window at the front, rays discolored by the dusty glass. Spiderwebs cluster in their usual pockets.

The canvas of plywood and nails is so deceivingly still. Waiting.

When Jane pushes up the trapdoor, it clatters to the floor with a hollow crack, sending dust billowing. She heaves herself upwards into the space, clawing at the ragged floor for traction, feeling every splinter as it pierces her skin and drives its way into her flesh. If she didn’t know better she would drag her hands across that splitting wood to feel that intrusive, stinging pain once more—a pain that, for a moment, distracts her from the soft and hot and all-consuming  _ itch. _

She could tear herself apart to be rid of it, she thinks. Her skin is thinner than the walls of her house; it could be breached from inside or out.

Jane pushes herself into a standing position. Her head scrapes against the ceiling. Her bare soles are too thick to invite splinters. She shivers in the musty, sickly heat of the space, the way the air hangs weighty and oppressive. Filled with a thousand particles she cannot see.

But as she turns away from the window, into the space where the pregnant shadows fall, her gaze does not immediately light on the form of her bulbous, pulpy salvation. Because there is something here that should not be—that has never been here before.

It’s a door. An impossible door affixed to the peeling wall, a yellow door, a  _ clean _ door. A door that does not belong in a grimy attic, a door that should lead nowhere but a straight drop.

She blinks, and the sharpness in her mind falters. The door seems birthed by a dream. Confusion wells inside her—it’s an unpleasant feeling, one that robs her of her prickling convictions and casts her back into the state of ruminating upon possibility. The knowledge that the world is big enough to encompass not only herself, not only the swarming infinity of the Hive, but that it is also a world in which doors can appear in unexpected places and make one feel like their mind is playing tricks on them.

Well. It wouldn’t be the first time she thought she might be mad.

Jane steps over the trapdoor, grasping a flaky beam to steady herself. Another wave of nausea slips through her perception. Her vision unfocuses.

The door—

It  _ sings. _

It sings with a voice that is not a voice, noise that could never be made with a human throat, a voice thick with a seething, bouncing joy. It hooks itself on the corners of her mind and  _ tugs _ at her, curling its way into her in a manner entirely unlike the squirming things that dwell (that should dwell, that  _ will _ dwell) beneath her skin. It is the siren song of curiosity. Of the impossible. Of a feeling maddeningly unreal.

It isn’t fair. Not  _ now. _ Not when she is so close to such a realization of her own purpose. That something so wholly  _ fake _ would dare tempt her into its depths. A real door would have  _ pores, _ you see; it would be carved from the flesh of trees, not hewn from a hallucination. A real door can be infested and riddled with holes. No termites could ever make their home in this door. How  _ dare _ it call to her as if its mind games are anything compared to the sublime reality of the unstoppable, innumerable things that crawl and nest and infect.

“Show yourself,” Jane whispers into the far-from-empty room.

The door creaks open with a sound not unlike the creak of a real door, and the man who steps out bears a frame not unlike that of a real man. He is tall and thin, and his skin is so perfectly smooth that she imagines touching it would be like biting into a plastic apple. His long, curly hair is as yellow as his door. He smiles a painted smile with dry lips and unreadable eyes.

There is something so despicably  _ false _ about him. He refuses to meet her on her level—this is a man who has never seen a speck of mud on his shoes, who has never coughed, who could never  _ bleed _ like she can. A shell that would offer as much nourishment to the grave-worms as a glass statue. Flesh that will never see the red-purple ripening of infection, that could never bloom into a garden of wriggling harmony.

“I suppose,” says the not-man, his grin widening, “that it is rather foolish of me to stop by. The Hive has marked you so deeply that little could pull you from its clutches now. But I figured I might try. Call it a challenge.”

“What are you,” Jane snarls.

“Oho!  _ What _ am I? Hmm, I am a great many things, just like yourself. I suppose you could call me Michael; there are those who have called me Michael in the past. But I don’t see why there have to be names. Does  _ Michael _ encompass my entire self, everything inside of me and beyond me? Just like—I wouldn’t say  _ Jane _ properly conveys the multitudes that you contain, even now, in your colony’s infancy.”

This makes her pause. Funny, that something she understands so little would be able to understand her so much from the get go. Could wrap his mind so easily around a concept she has tried so very hard to explain. To herself, to others. At the very least it’s more than the fools at the Magnus Institute could do for her—which is, of course, deeply ironic.

“What is it like?” continues Michael. “Does it hurt?”

“No. It is an itch. It is a terrible, ineffable itch, and if you have come to soothe me with your words then you are much too late.”

“Words!” He giggles then, a sound that wrinkles the air around it into unpleasant shapes. “Words, words, words. No, I am not here to speak truth to you. I do not even know what an  _ itch _ is, really. It isn’t a sensation I can feel anymore.”

“Because you have no body.”

“Who’s to say?”

“It’s clear that what you’ve shown me is a facade.”

“Ah,  _ clarity. _ A funny thing. And  _ facade _ is an interesting word choice as well. The front of a building, hmm? It’s more fitting than you would think.”

“Are you a building?” asks Jane, fully aware that an absurd question will yield an absurd answer.

“Are you?” And before she can reply, he tilts his head and taps a long finger to his chin and says, “No, no, you are not a building. You are a  _ nest.” _

“My body is a testament to the love of a thousand singing tenants. Could you say the same?”

“It depends on the line you draw between  _ love _ and  _ fear.” _

She wants to respond that they are not the same at all, that one is to be pursued and the other shunned, but then she thinks of the intoxicating horror and the curdling beauty of the Hive and finds that she doesn’t have it in her to argue.

“But, then, in a way, we are opposites, aren’t we? You fear the things that dwell within you, but those that traverse what could generously be called my  _ body _ —they fear me.”

“I don’t fear the Hive.”

A sound of inhuman amusement burbles from Michael’s throat. “Two half-truths wrapped into one! Excellent. Now, does that make a full truth, or a full lie?”

Jane stays silent, waiting. A creature of such twisting words, she figures, will always have more to say, sheathing itself in language instead of skin.

“Of course you fear the Hive,” he continues matter-of-factly. “It wouldn’t have chosen you if you didn’t. But—does it do you any good to separate yourself from the Hive? A young man once looked at a doorway with confusion and with fear, and look at where he is now. What is a Hive, Jane? Is it a congregation of insects, or is it the nest that they swarm to?”

“What do you know of the Hive?”

He shrugs. “Less than you do, I would expect. I do not covet knowledge like  _ some _ do.”

“Are you going to tell me why you’ve interrupted me? Or must I decipher it from your riddles?”

“Oh, please, allow me a  _ little _ rambling. It has been a rather long time since I spoke to a person in the real world.”

Jane laughs. It surprises her how harsh the noise is. “Of course you aren’t of the  _ real world.” _

“More or less. Things get a little muddied when you’re an endless fractal corridor.”

_ Fractals. _

Something clicks inside Jane’s churning mind.

She used to have a customer who would talk of fractals. A young woman with bright blue hair and tie dye t-shirts two sizes too large. She leaned on the counter and whispered to Jane in a voice thick with smoke, told her all about the geometry of each of her crystals, the patterns of molecules that make up such structures. It was always  _ patterns _ for her. She was obsessed with Fibonacci numbers and their golden spiral, how frequently they appeared in nature, how it  _ must _ indicate some deeper spiritual meaning. With fractals and their infinite complexity.

_ How is it, _ the young woman drawled, in high, girly tones that peaked and dipped like sine waves,  _ that a shape can be subdivided ad infinitum? Look, look, I printed you out a picture. This is called a Sierpinski triangle. It’s barely bigger than my hand, but! Look at how the triangles keep going, as far as the eye can see! It’s an imperfect picture, of course; pixels and ink are necessary limits, but what if you could shed all those framing devices and gaze upon the true form, the platonic ideal of a fractal? Look at it, look at it—you aren’t looking! Doesn’t it have an energy to it? Don’t you think it’s a bit like a computer? How they started out so big, and now they get smaller and smaller and smaller, so much information in so little space? _

And Jane had not been listening properly, because she swore she heard something crawling beneath the floorboards, something more real and  _ alive _ than a diagram of a shape on a thin piece of printer paper.

Jane has never been good at maths. This is something she accepted early in her education, long before she failed algebra because it simply did not  _ mean _ anything to her. Find x. What is x? A number—no, what does it represent? What number? 32. 32 of—what? 32 apples? 32 books? 32 ants like the ones that crept up her legs and tickled her knees with their tiny little feet while she tried and failed to grasp how a number could be  _ imaginary. _ How a number could be anything other than a concrete concept describing a value in the real world.

Functions and quadratics. Find the roots. The roots are in the soil, professor. The roots are thick and stained with dirt and there is a fungus spreading through them, a wonderful white mold whose thin fur looks like the head of a dandelion. How can a parabola be infinite? The only  _ real _ infinity is the multiplication of hot, squirming bodies in the ground.

The Hive is infinite. The Hive is patient. The Hive knows that to squash a single insect is to extinguish one molecule in a vast, rippling pool. Didn’t maths teach her that 99.99 repeating is effectively equal to 100?

Michael watches her with ultraviolet eyes and tells her that he  _ is _ a fractal, and Jane thinks she has never known loathing quite so deep.

“Are you here because you want to  _ convert _ me?” she spits. “Do you think that the infinity within you is  _ anything _ like the infinity within me?”

“Yes,” he says.

“You called yourself a house.”

“I called myself a building, because it is true. More or less.” He giggles. “But I could be a house. I could be a great deal of things.”

She doesn’t know why she’s so angry. Her soul is steeping in fever and frenzy, the itch begs to finally be scratched, but now, in this sepic attic, instead of her apotheosis she finds a mockery of a human being. Made not of flesh and bone but of falsehoods and smiles.

“If you are a house then you are as good as a digital rendering of one. A corridor isn’t a house. A door isn’t a house. Nothing real lives within your walls. How could anyone  _ live _ in a hallway? Liminal spaces are not for residence; they are for waiting.”

“And for wandering. Is there no spirit of exploration within you, Jane? Don’t you want to dance across the borders of the possible?”

“I have done my exploration, and it led me to the farthest reaches of spiritualism and then back to my own attic.”

Michael’s eyes—for the first time, perhaps—flick around the space in which the two of them find themselves. He takes in the claustrophobia of it all. The dust and splinters that settle on the floor in a thick and heavy coating like icing on a cake. And finally, the fat, paper form that calls itself a nest, sitting there in the corner. Jane thinks she sees his eyes trace its swirls. She wonders if he can hear its warbling song.

“Hmm,” he says, and steps towards it, crouching down to peer at it. “It’s beautiful.”

“It’s not for you.”

Michael holds out a thin finger and taps the center of one of its spirals. A puncture wound appears there, a tiny hole in the fragile pulp. Another jolt of rage surges through Jane’s body, but before she can rush forward to protect the face of the thing she holds so dear, Michael has drawn away.

“I’m sorry. But I do love the patterns.”

“It isn’t  _ about _ the patterns.”

His face curls into something of a faux pout. “Oh, you are so very angry, aren’t you? I’m only trying to help.”

“Help!” Jane barks. “You want to be my refuge from the things that seek to burrow within me? Pain medication? An illusory bandage that covers up the feeling of the problem and never fixes it at the root? Do you want to lie to me and tell me that my senses aren’t real—that my  _ itch _ isn’t real, just madness?”

She doesn’t mention that, deep down, some part of her that hasn’t felt the pitter-patter of crawling legs still wants to believe that it  _ is _ just madness. But as she yells, Michael just looks impressed.

“Clever,” he replies, drawing out the word. “But isn’t  _ sensation _ just the brain’s response to the stimuli of the world? There is nothing inside you worming its way through your flesh, at least not yet.”

“You aren’t doing a particularly good job of convincing me of anything.”

He shrugs, irritatingly nonchalant. “Then perhaps you truly are lost to the Corruption. I hear that its  _ love _ is hard to resist.”

_ Corruption. _ It feels like the wrong word, somehow. She doesn’t think she has been  _ corrupted. _ It feels as if she has uncovered some great truth, happened upon a sickening reality that all the world seems to abhor. Tries to wash away. Scrub out the mold. Kill the ants and swat the flies and squish the worms into pasty smears on the sidewalk, but they will keep coming. And they will find their home.

“If it is not real,” says Jane, voice trembling under the weight of her rage and her fear and her determination, “then I will  _ make _ it real. I will show you what it is to be a  _ house.” _

Michael responds, perhaps, but his voice is drowned out by the intoxicating song that oozes from the crevices between the ceiling beams, from the splintering floor, from the hive that promises a gateway into a world she has only just begun to grasp. No, this man—this  _ construct _ —will not get in her way. He may hold infinity behind him but he is nothing but a trick of the light, a mathematical abstraction. He backs away as she advances on him, and the door is shut and gone in the blink of an eye.

And Jane is alone in the attic, but she is not alone, really, because she knows what hides in the walls. And she knows that it is waiting. And it is more than just a feeling, an instinct—it is something that surrounds her and consumes her. It is real. Tangible. So, so tangible.

It wants her and it loves her and it will feed her and feed on her and she wouldn’t have it any other way.

She teeters towards the massive pulpy thing in the corner. Is she imagining it, or is it moving? Throbbing like a heartbeat. The itch within her screams and strains and pulls her ever closer. It’s a threshold. All she has to do is reach out.

Jane plunges her arm into the swollen hive, and throws open the doors to her writhing soul.

**Author's Note:**

> it can be a little tricky at times writing about one of your favorite characters absolutely dragging your other favorite character (even if he is being a bitch), but this was very fun to write! this fic has been stewing in my mind for a while..
> 
> thank you to @Dathen for reading this over and suggesting content warnings!


End file.
